


and still, the world turns

by andreaphobia



Category: Katekyou Hitman Reborn!
Genre: College, Growing Up, M/M, growing older, searching for meaning
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-15
Updated: 2017-06-15
Packaged: 2018-11-14 09:10:22
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,769
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11204889
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/andreaphobia/pseuds/andreaphobia
Summary: Yamamoto goes overseas to study, leaving Hibari behind. Meanwhile, life goes on.





	and still, the world turns

**Author's Note:**

> I said I would finish it, so here it is. (At least this one only took a month!)

 

 

“So,” says Gokudera, as he puffs away at a cigarette. “You told him yet?”

Reflexively, Yamamoto smiles. Out of the corner of his eye, lying on his back in the dirt, he can see Gokudera’s feet in his ratty sneakers, dangling over the side of the Namimori High baseball field bleachers. The air tastes dry—heavy, somehow, like a storm is coming, but the sky overhead is as blue as can be.

“Told who?” he asks.

Gokudera pulls the cigarette from his mouth and taps ash from the tip, scattering it into the wind.

“Hibari, of course.” His tone is unimpressed, as if to say, _Don’t play dumb_ , or maybe _Who else could I be talking about?_

Now, it’s gotta be said, there’s kind of a weird dynamic between them—him and Gokudera, that is. Less so when Tsuna isn’t there, but weird all the same. And to be fair, the weirdness is mainly on Gokudera’s end. When Tsuna’s around, Gokudera loses his head a little. It’s as though he can’t talk to Yamamoto like a normal person. Still, they’ve ended up spending a lot of time together over the years; had at least a handful of relatively normal conversations. You could even consider them friends by this point, using a broad-enough definition.

“Haha, oh, him.”

Like there was ever any question. Yamamoto looks back up towards the sky. No one’s watching him at this moment, so there’s no reason to smile. “Nah,” he says, “not yet.”

For a moment, he isn’t sure if the silver haze floating somewhere overhead is a cloud, or cigarette smoke. Then—wrinkling his nose at the smell—he becomes sure. (The price one pays for being friendly with Gokudera, he supposes.)

“Man.” Gokudera sighs, a sound with no particular sadness in it. “He’s gonna flip when he finds out.”

One of the things Yamamoto likes about Gokudera, if he’s being honest, is just how goddamn _dumb_ he is sometimes. Not school-dumb; yeah, he’s good with numbers and all that other junk, but like, _people_ -dumb. Maybe he was tragically born without his intuition bone, or something. Like, all he’s saying is, if Gokudera had to read a guy or die, he’d... well... die.

And it amuses Yamamoto just how wrong he can get things like this; just how little Gokudera understands about their friendly neighborhood Cloud Guardian. Because Hibari wouldn’t flip out, hearing about something like this. Flipping out would be showing you care, and Hibari’s dangerously allergic to _that_. No, Yamamoto’s pretty sure that, if and when he finds out, Hibari won’t do a damn thing. That’s more his style, after all.

Still, Yamamoto will admit that he has a particularly special perspective on said Cloud Guardian. Definitely sees him in a different light than Gokudera does, at any rate. If he had to guess, he’d say Gokudera probably dislikes, fears, and respects Hibari, in roughly equal measures. As for how Yamamoto feels about him...

Not to use a cliche, but: it’s complicated. Yet also really simple. Actually, kind of a mix of both. The simple part is, he loves getting under Hibari’s skin, winding him up. The more complicated part is, _why_.

He chuckles a bit, trying to picture a Hibari who might actually have some kind of external reaction to the news (apart from breaking out in hives, due to his caring-allergy). How different things would be, if Hibari knew how to do feelings, or be human.

Maybe Yamamoto wouldn’t like him quite so much. “You think so?” he asks.

“Look,” says Gokudera, flicking his cigarette away as he hops down from where he’s sitting. Tsuna’s appeared at the entrance to the field and is jogging over, which means that their little heart-to-heart is over. “Tell him or don’t. It’s your funeral.”

Well, _that_ part’s true, at least. Left behind, Yamamoto sits up and absently brushes a bit of grass from his hair. Then he looks back up at the sky—at the clouds passing by, one by one, without a care in the world.

 _Nice day for a funeral_ , he thinks, and gets to his feet.

*

After they get their bags and the rest of their stuff from the lockers, Yamamoto sees the two of them off at the school gate with a smile and a wave. No complaints from Gokudera, since this means he gets to walk Tsuna home by himself, but he does give Yamamoto a _look_ which could, in another light, almost be described as concern.

Yamamoto finds this touching; historically, him being bitten to death was something that Gokudera wouldn’t mind all that much, but now it’s almost like he cares. (Even if it’s just because it would make Tsuna sad, that’s better than nothing.)

Then, when they’re finally gone from sight, he turns, goes back into the school, and makes the long, familiar trek up to Hibari’s office, alone.

Hibari’s new office at Namimori High is highly reminiscent of the one he had when they were at Namimori Middle; in that sense, it’s a good reflection of its owner, creature of habit that he is. Technically speaking, he should have graduated out of Nami High a year ago, but for some reason he’s still around, and no one seems to have the heart—or the guts—to tell him to leave.

It’s dark inside the office, after school, but Yamamoto knows that doesn’t mean no one’s home. He pokes his head in without knocking, and looks around.

Sure enough, Hibari is seated in his chair by the window, head on arms on desk and dozing quietly. A couple of strange, fleeting thoughts cross Yamamoto’s mind, but for the moment, he doesn’t say anything; nothing to break the spell of silence. He crosses the room in a few strides, and plops himself down in the chair on the other side of Hibari’s desk—normally reserved for rule breakers, delinquents, and other good-for-nothings. Which... well, _he_ wouldn’t count himself amongst that number, but he’s sure Hibari has got his own opinion about the matter.

Still quiet, he leans forward onto the desk for a better look. Opportunities like this are few and far between, but whenever he does get one, he finds that his thoughts follow a rather predictable path—leading first with a reflection on how long Hibari’s eyelashes are (answer: very), and then something about his slender wrists; too delicate to snap a man’s neck, or so you’d think. Where does he hide all that strength, Yamamoto wonders. (Probably the same place he keeps all his feelings: buried deep, a place no one else can find them.)

Some amount of time passes, like this. Yamamoto’s not sure how long, exactly; all he knows is that eventually the sun sinks down past where he can see it from the window, the sky fades from blue to orange to a sort of orangey-purple twilight color. And then, like clockwork, when a chill seeps into the room and the sky turns back to the blue of night, Hibari’s eyes flutter open.

He blinks once or twice, slowly, returning to the waking world; focuses, and then notices Yamamoto, who grins at him.

“Had a nice nap?”

“None of your business.” Hibari yawns.

His complete lack of surprise makes Yamamoto’s grin tick a little wider. Then he remembers Gokudera’s words: _Tell him or don’t. It’s your funeral_.

Surprisingly wise, coming from him. Yamamoto swallows, and after a moment, he says, “Wanna go home together?”

“Wanna die?”

Hibari’s retort is automatic, and earns a chuckle from Yamamoto, who says, “I can’t die yet. I still have things I need to do.”

“Like what.”

“Well... I haven’t gotten to show Hibari what it means to feel good yet—”

Yamamoto dodges Hibari’s lazy swipe at him, and laughs again. Hibari isn’t really trying, which makes it easier; halfway through the swipe it turns into a stretch, long and languid, the way a cat works the kinks out of its spine upon waking.

Yamamoto likes finding him like this—likes finding him most ways, but that’s besides the point—still half-asleep, he’s less prickly, softer round the edges. At times like this, it might be easier to see what Yamamoto likes about him, if anyone was bothered to look.

Then again, maybe it’s better that no one does. (Yamamoto likes to believe that there are parts of Hibari no one else knows; parts that he can keep all to himself.)

When Hibari stands, Yamamoto does too, pushing his chair in hurriedly so he can dash after him.

“Ahh, wait up, Hibari!” Catching the door just before it hits him in the face, he slips out of the office in Hibari’s wake. As he lengthens his stride to catch up, an idea strikes him. “Hey, you should come over for dinner tonight! Dad would love to have you.”

“Don’t wanna.”

“You’re so stubborn,” Yamamoto says, but with deep affection.

Hibari snorts. “Am not.”

“And contrary.” As if to prove his point, Hibari does not respond to this; he just walks on, hair and old-style gakuran jacket stirring lightly in the evening breeze. The high school isn’t too far from Yamamoto’s place, close enough to be pleasantly walkable. Around dinnertime, like now, the street crowds are thinning out, which might be why Hibari prefers going home at this time; either that, or he just loves school that much. The answer isn’t clear, but then again it isn’t important, either.

When he finally turns onto the street leading to Takesushi, though, where they’d normally part ways, he pauses to look back. Hibari, of course, is already walking off.

“Hibari. Hibari—wait!”

And to his surprise, Hibari actually stops walking, though he doesn’t turn round. (Late-afternoon siestas must do wonders for his mood.) Of course, Yamamoto knows Hibari’s patience has limits, so he starts talking without delay.

“I’m, uh, leaving next week. Going overseas for a couple of years.” He pauses to gather his thoughts. “Got an offer for a baseball scholarship... it’ll put me through school, and I get to play ball, too. So... um...”

He trails off. Slowly, Hibari turns. His expression, when their eyes meet, is inscrutable, and so is his tone when he finally speaks.

“You’re telling me this... why?”

“Why, you ask...” Something like this is more familiar territory, and so Yamamoto grins, throwing his hands behind his neck. Behind him, the dinner crowd bustles and throngs, but he’s looking ahead, right at Hibari, and his gaze never falters. “For a goodbye kiss?”

“Get real.”

Hibari turns away again with a huff. As he’s walking off, Yamamoto cups his hands over his mouth and calls after him, “Don’t get too lonely without me, okay?” And, for good measure, he adds, “I’ll just have to collect that kiss when I come back!”

And sure, he knows he’s being too loud; is vaguely aware that people are staring and that he’s making a fool of himself, but really, he couldn’t care less. After all, he’s a fool for Hibari.

*

A week goes by, and without warning Yamamoto finds himself standing in the airport, bags all packed and surrounded by a pack of tearful, smiling friends. The usual gang is there to see him off, minus that one guy who professes to hate crowds—although at one point Yamamoto thinks he might have seen, out of the corner of his eye, a little yellow canary flitting by.

There’s a fair amount of crying, but laughter, too, and even Gokudera overcomes his emotional constipation long enough to give Yamamoto a manly thump on the back and some well-wishes. Tsuna, for his part, hugs him tight; tells him to go safe, and come back safe. He doesn’t say anything else, but maybe that’s all that really needs to be said right now.

To the rest of the world, he supposes it’s obvious why he’s going. Reason number one: for the education, of course. Sure, he’s not a great lover of school like some others, but there are things about the world that he still needs to learn; things he’ll need to know once he’s standing at Tsuna’s side. Just depending on Gokudera to be there to pick up the slack isn’t really a long-term strategy. After all, that’s what it means to be dependable: you can’t just be good at one thing. (No one in the history of mankind ever said: “He can only do one thing well, what a dependable guy!”)

So anyway, that’s the first reason. As for the second, well... it’s for the love of the game. A sort of last hurrah, if you will. The world, and everything around him, it’s all changing so fast; he’ll probably never get another chance like this again. With so many things about his future being decided for him, what’s so bad about a little selfish detour, now and then?

And then there’s the third reason, but one that he’ll barely admit, even to himself: something about him, _inside_ of him, needs to change. Perhaps it ought to worry him that he’s not even sure what that mysterious quality is, as not knowing something that important seems like a recipe for disaster. Still, all he knows is that change is needed, and he’s not going to find it here.

He doesn’t know where that feeling comes from, either, but the first glimmer of something akin to understanding comes to him when he’s finally on the plane, looking out of the window, and beyond the curve of the wing he sees an infinite sea of shimmering waves. And beyond that, tiny little islands disappearing into the distance; the place that was up until an hour ago, his entire world, the place he called home. A scattering of mossy rocks, sinking into the sea. It makes him think of Hibari, and the thought is accompanied by a short, sharp pain. The way he would gaze off into the distance as he surveyed his tiny kingdom; how untouchable he seemed at those moments, how remote.

One day, Yamamoto thinks, he wants to be able to see what Hibari sees. And as for getting there, one thing’s for sure: he won’t be going anywhere standing still.

*

Nothing really prepares him for how _weird_ America is, compared to home. He moves into a dorm, and ends up rooming with a guy called Chuck who says “bro” a lot and is overbearingly friendly, in a quintessentially American way. But this isn’t a bad thing; he never mentions Yamamoto’s tenuous grasp of English, and with the help of his new friend, Yamamoto very quickly learns the intricacies of college life—like how to order at Chipotle, or why you ought never to say a good word about That Other School Across The Way. This laundry list of arcane rules becomes the guidebook for his new life, and soon enough he’s integrated himself into his little slice of society with barely a hitch.

Chuck even sets him up on a couple of blind dates, for some reason, and after a couple of botched attempts with some (admittedly gorgeous) blonde sorority chicks, he really hits it off with a small, sarcastic, dark-haired girl named Jenny. Jenny smells great, is pleasantly soft in all the right places, and makes him laugh hard enough to hurt.

And for a time, it serves as a distraction, good enough to keep the loneliness of being in a strange land at bay.

Unfortunately, it only lasts up until Yamamoto—entirely on accident, mind you—sticks his foot in his mouth by calling out the wrong name in the middle of a heavy petting session. And yeah, he tries to explain it away ( _it’s just this, uh, well, friend of his, sorta, from high school—no, not a girl, a guy friend—yeah, haha, he knows, it’s weird, right?—_ ) but for some reason, Jenny is not impressed.

He pulls on his shirt dejectedly as she’s getting dressed, neither meeting the other’ eyes. He’s vaguely aware that he should apologize, and maybe that would make things okay between them again—but he’s also aware that there’s a part of him, a rather large part at that, that doesn’t really want to.

Jenny gets to her feet and goes to the door, and Yamamoto almost thinks she’s about to leave without a word when she pauses with her hand on the doorframe. Not quite looking back at him, but instead addressing her words towards some unspecified point over her shoulder.

“—I don’t know what you’re looking for, Takeshi,” she says, quietly, “but it isn’t me.”

She shuts the door behind her, and Yamamoto flops back onto his bed to stare at the ceiling. Then he gets up again, and starts ripping the sheets off the mattress, bundling them up into a ball to stuff into his hamper. (The faint smell of her perfume lingers behind, accusingly.)

After this small-scale disaster, he asks Chuck to maybe cool it a little with the blind date setups. Like, he appreciates them and all, but maybe he ought to be spending more time on his studies.

Which is exactly what he does, diving into practices and after-school study sessions with his own special brand of enthusiasm. (His teammates think he’s nursing a broken heart, and Yamamoto doesn’t bother to correct them, because in a way, they’re not wrong.)

And baseball is baseball, no matter where you are, but there’s something that makes this place different—the crunch of grass underfoot feels strange, the sky a different shade of blue, and even the air itself has a particular, alien flavor to it that reminds him that home lies elsewhere. When he tries to recall Namimori, it returns to him mainly in a series of crisp, almost stark vignettes; fragments of memories, but each one unique, a thing to be cherished. The smell of cut grass and clean linen, the track team’s rhythmic shouts and the echoing crack of a ball against a metal bat, the wispy sound of curtains rustling at the disciplinary committee’s office window, and Hibari’s soft breathing in sleep...

It scares him to think that what he sees now, in his mind, is something—a faraway place, a moment in time—that now exists only in memories, just an echo of the way things used to be. With all his heart, he misses clowning around with Tsuna and Gokudera, training with Ryohei, sparring with Reborn, talking with his dad over dinner... he misses everything, all of it. Even the things that he hated.

And of course, he misses Hibari like a hole in the heart; a constant ache that never quite goes away.

Calling them on the phone seems like a ready-made recipe for homesickness, so he resorts to texting (and besides, Hibari would never willingly pick up a phone call). At his dad’s behest he got one of those fancy data plans with international texting, because God knows he’d forget to eat dinner every day without constant reminders—or so Yamamoto Tsuyoshi seems to think. But Yamamoto has no complaints; it lets him stay in touch with the others, even if it’s just sporadically, and best of all, lets him send the odd missive Hibari’s way, too. No grand gestures, nothing like that. Just updates on his life: the news, the weather, or else a mention of something that reminded him of home.

 _The kind of stuff a herbivore would send_ , Yamamoto thinks, with perfect self-awareness. But still.

He even receives the occasional, unexpected response; the first one he gets nearly makes him fall out of his chair with shock. It reads:

_Too many messages._

And is quickly followed by:

 _Namimori is fine without you_.

And because Yamamoto is that kind of a person, because he just can’t help himself, he sends back:

_Is Hibari fine without me?_

To that he receives no answer, but of course he hadn’t expected one. Just thinking about how annoyed that’s likely made Hibari is enough to cheer him up for the rest of the day.

“Y’know, you never told me about your girl back home,” Chuck says to him one evening, over a healthy midnight snack of Pepsi and pizza rolls. “You shoulda said something.”

Yamamoto promptly chokes, and only manages to expel his half-eaten pizza roll after a solid half-minute of coughing. With eyes watering, he looks at Chuck and says, intelligently, “My—uh—my what?”

Chuck smirks at him. “Don’t play dumb with me. You wouldn’t shut up about her the other night, when we were at Trey’s place, hey?”

Only mildly horrified, Yamamoto thinks back, and—yeah, okay, he might have had a little bit too much to drink at that party, because past a certain point of night his recollections blur together into a confusing, mud-colored mess. Still, it’s not like he drank so much that he forgot about a long-distance girlfriend. (Drink or not, he’s pretty sure he’d remember something like that.)

“Uh... so...” Yamamoto tries to grin, awkwardly, though it feels more like a grimace. “What’d I say?”

“You _really_ don’t remember?” Chuck scoffs. “Heeella sappy shit. She blows your mind, she’s the only for you...” He laughs. “Man, it’s no wonder Jenny dumped you.”

The mention of Jenny causes a mild pang of guilt, but this is overshadowed by the sinking realization of just what he must have been saying, the other night. Chuck must see the recognition dawning on Yamamoto’s face, because he grins. “Gonna stop pretending she exists, then?”

“Yeah... sorry ‘bout that.” Yamamoto laughs sheepishly, and rubs the back of his neck. Because sure, he never once said it was a _girl_ waiting for him back home, but—same basic idea.

(Also, from now on, he’s gonna be more careful with the drink.)

*

But really, apart from the homesickness, Yamamoto doesn’t half mind his new life. It’s fun—all the opportunities, meeting new people, doing new things that he never would’ve gotten the chance to try if he’d just stayed put in little old Namimori. And he never regrets it for a moment, actually, until the day that it happens.

It turns out to be the kind of regret that lasts a lifetime... but sometimes, that’s just the way it goes.

On a weekend afternoon like any other, he gets a call from Reborn’s number—unusual in itself, Reborn being a man of few words, but considering the time difference even stranger still. _Is it still business hours over there?_ he thinks, hitting the button to answer the call as he walks a bit away from the crowd for privacy. It’s beautiful out; the sun is shining, people are laughing, gathered on the lawn on their picnic blankets, or playing catch.

For all the wrong reasons, he’ll always remember this day.

The call connects, and he puts the phone to his ear. “It’s late over there, huh?” he says, brightly, as a greeting. “What’s up?”

In the background he hears Tsuna’s voice, and then hears the phone being handed over. And actually, Yamamoto doesn’t have the slightest inkling that something is wrong until this happens, because it sounds like—well, not as if Tsuna’s _crying_ , exactly. More like he’s on the verge of tears, but is holding himself back.

There’s a tremor in his voice when he speaks, and something in Yamamoto’s stomach turns to lead.

“I—Yamamoto, it’s... your dad. He’s...”

Tsuna doesn’t finish his sentence, nor does he have to. Yamamoto’s mind has gone blank, nothing but emptiness inside. The enormity of the thing that Tsuna is trying to tell him is beyond all comprehension. Behind his back the sound of talking, people’s voices and laughter, starts to fade, replaced by a kind of static that threatens to drown out the entire world. The ground spins; he’s sinking, falling head-first into a void...

He clears his throat, which feels like it’s stuffed full of cotton, and rasps, “How—?...”

No other words follow this, but Tsuna intuits what he’s looking for.

“It was... it was planned,” he says, heavily. “Deliberate. A way of paying us back. They knew that he was a... an... an _associate_ , of ours.” He pauses, long enough to try and stem the shaking in his voice. “Hibari-san was the one who found him. There was a disturbance in Namimori late last night—you know Hibari-san. He was on the scene first, but... it was already too late...”

 _Hibari_. Yamamoto’s stomach lurches. To think that Hibari was there, that he might have found him, or even _seen_ it happen—

“I... I see.” Right now, that’s all he can manage. (And maybe for the first time in his life, Yamamoto can’t find anything to laugh about.)

He doesn’t remember how he spent the rest of that day; in fact, the next few weeks are nothing but a blur, a dark parade of numbness. On the inside, he vacillates between rage and a frightening coldness, sometimes going between the two so quickly that he suffers a kind of emotional whiplash. At some point he must have booked a plane ticket, or maybe someone else did it for him; either way, he emerges from this black cloud one day to find himself on a plane, flying home. For the... for funeral.

It’s hard to come to grips with those words. Three years away, and the first time he comes back is so he can bury his dad. Irony, or perhaps more accurately you could call it cruelty. After all is said and done—after the wake, the funeral, the cremation, all of it—he stands outside the crematorium, too hot in a suit with a scratchy collar, gazing out at the drooping, gently-swaying trees around the perimeter of the grounds.

Tsuna stands nearby, quiet, shoulders hunched inward under the weight of all that duty, all that guilt. It’s his organization, after all, that was the cause of this—if not for the mafia, they wouldn’t be here at all.

Not that Yamamoto blames him, no; he’s not so petty as that. Still, he’s grateful that Tsuna is quiet, for the moment. He appreciates the company, but in the end there’s nothing he really wants to say to anyone, right now, when his father’s ashes and bones are resting inside of an urn.

It’s a beautiful day outside.

(It makes him slightly ill.)

Ten, nearly fifteen minutes pass before Tsuna breaks the silence, but it still takes Yamamoto by surprise.

“What... um... what will you do now?”

At this, Yamamoto only shrugs. It wasn’t like he had a seven-day itinerary planned out for this trip. But Tsuna, perhaps heartened to receive a response at all, forges onward.

“You know, Hibari-san’s in town. Um.” He hesitates, looking down at his fingers, all laced together; and for a moment, Yamamoto sees a vision of the boy that he remembers from his school days. (His dearest friend.) “Do you... want to go see him? Since you’re both back, and all.”

For a moment, Yamamoto is tempted— _god_ , is it ever tempting. But he also knows that he if he walks out of this place, having just buried his father, to go to Hibari’s side, he’ll never want to leave again.

“Nah,” he says, finally. Somewhere along the horizon, silhouetted against the sky, a bird is studiously flapping its wings. He keeps his eyes on it as it soars, until it’s out of sight.

“You sure?”

There’s doubt in Tsuna’s voice, but Yamamoto’s mind is made up.

“Yeah,” he says. “But thank him for me, okay?”

“All right,” Tsuna says, gently. “I can do that for you.”

Yamamoto’s mouth twitches into an expression which very nearly approximates his old smile. Of course Tsuna would understand; it’s Tsuna, after all. That much, at least, he can be grateful for.

Then Yamamoto turns away, looking towards tomorrow. The future awaits.

*

In the end, he finds himself back in America, finishing up his degree. Even though attending classes and training and going through the motions is the absolute last thing he wants to do, he wouldn’t want to disappoint his pops. But so little changes about his day-to-day life that it practically makes him nauseous. His dad died, and life goes on. Takesushi lies empty, and still, the world turns.

Because that person no longer exists, it’s almost as if nothing ever happened. Like nothing ended, because there’s nothing tangible, nothing he can hold in his hand to show as proof that it was ever there at all.

And he says ‘almost’, because that was something he believed a long time ago—when he was younger, a more naive version of himself. But he knows well, now; sometimes all you have left to remember a thing by is memories, but that doesn’t make it any less real. Something ends, and something else begins. That’s just the way it goes.

It’s not long after his graduation that he’s initiated into the Vongola family, as he always knew would happen. He spends a while over in Italy, learning the ropes, but one day, when the timing feels right and Tsuna, the newly-minted boss, gives him the okay, he packs a bag and hops on the first flight back to Namimori, Japan.

The first thing he does when he gets back is, of course, to go home. He hadn’t set foot in there for over a year, relying on friendly neighbors to do a little dusting and upkeep of the place while he’s gone. But now he has the chance, he cleans the place from top to bottom, mopping the floors, polishing all the windows, and even wiping the old sushi bar off until it’s gleaming.

It feels almost like a ritual, doing this; cleansing in more ways than one. The simple act of hard, uncomplicated labor, without having to think about things to come, provides respite; empties his mind.

After _that,_ he takes a bouquet and a bottle of sake to his dad’s grave to pay his respects. It makes him smile to see the grave so clean and neat, with fresh flowers; the nice lady from the general store across the street must have visited recently. He sets down his offerings, and then kneels before the grave site to pray.

Then he gets to his feet, brushes the dust from his knees, and heads off.

Four years have passed since he last set foot near Hibari’s property; that massive expanse of zen gardens and long, low buildings, constructed in the traditional style. Returning after a long absence, the place seems unreal, larger than life—like something out of a film set. He buzzes the ringer at the gate and, before long, is shown in by Kusakabe, who greets him with an orderly courteousness that Yamamoto supposes must be a mark of all ex-disciplinary committee members.

“Long time no see, huh?” he says, cheerfully, as they make the long trek up towards the lodgings proper. “Didn’t realize you were still sticking around.”

“For as long as Kyo-san needs me,” Kusakabe states, calmly.

“Oh yeah?” says Yamamoto, grinning as he stretches his arms up and out, then placing them behind his neck as they walk. “Well, that’s just great, isn’t it?”

Kusakabe doesn’t answer, but Yamamoto thinks he sees the hint of a smile on his face. He shows Yamamoto into a traditional Japanese room, and then shuts the door behind him, leaving him there standing awkwardly on tatami in his socks. The room lies opens on one side towards a garden, which doesn’t attract his attention until he hears a strange, rustling sound. Looking just as fluffy as the last time Yamamoto saw him, a yellow canary flutters inside.

“Oh, so you’re here too!” Delighted, he reaches out a hand towards the little bird, but instead of landing on his finger it tumbles into his hair, chirruping loudly. The sensation of it is both strange and familiar at the same time, filling him with warmth. But it doesn’t last long; without warning, Hibird takes off again, singing a melody that Yamamoto easily places as the school song of a certain middle school.

“Whoa there, little guy,” says Yamamoto, watching Hibird tumbling through the air. “Leaving so soon?”

If he was wondering why, he receives an answer in the next moment. The door slides open abruptly, and there in the doorway stands Hibari. He’s wearing a suit, his hair is shorter, and—

“You grew!” Yamamoto says, charmed.

“So did you,” Hibari says, glancing Yamamoto up and down and lingering for a moment on the scar marking his chin. His tone is aloof, but there’s a certain bitterness in his expression as he speaks that makes Yamamoto grin.

“Lots of exercise and fresh air makes a boy grow big, healthy, and strong! Hey, if you want to grow taller, maybe you should start playing baseball.”

“No thanks.”

He steps into the room and shuts the door. Right now, Yamamoto knows better than to move, so he waits as Hibari approaches him, stopping a couple of steps away. Then Hibari cocks his head, looking at him, and Yamamoto takes this as his cue. He closes the distance between them, leaning in closer to get a heady whiff of a nearly-forgotten scent that in his mind is all tangled up with longing, loneliness, and regret; a scent inextricably tied to memories of this place, of school, of Hibari, of _home_.

They’re close enough that their cheeks brush, but Hibari doesn’t move. Yamamoto smiles, just a little.

“Four years and you still won’t make the first move, huh?”

Hibari’s expression remains cool.

“You left,” he says. And then adds, after a pause, “ _I_ didn’t.”

The words make Yamamoto’s heart hurt. The way that Hibari’s looking up at him from under lashes, with that particular look that Yamamoto knows so well; the same look he had when they were sparring and Yamamoto did something particularly clever, like pinning him to the ground and bringing their faces up close enough to touch—

“Yeah, that’s true,” he murmurs, faintly. “I did leave, didn’t I? Sorry. I’ll make it up to you.”

“No one asked you to.”

Four years gone by, and he still doesn’t know what he’s learned, doesn’t know what he’s found, except maybe a bunch of platitudes. The more things change, the more they stay the same, and other things of that nature.

“I know, I know,” he says, laughing. “You didn’t ask for this. So this is just something I’m doing for myself, okay?”

Hibari makes a soft grumbling noise, but he doesn’t pull away, and that’s good enough for Yamamoto.

He leans in, and finds the kiss he’s been looking for.

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> Comments and kudos appreciated! :D


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